I made a number of fancy Christmas Stockings a number of years, including embellished crazy quilt of various kinds. When I was featuring a piece of embroidery, I did do that hooped before it was assembled into the stocking. I found that with a foundation I could do the handwork without a hoop, but most of mine wasn't all that fancy but I do like incorporating beads into my stitching.
I do recommend making the stocking shape a bit oversized. Especially if you are going to hoop it you might want to make a large rectangle to work with, you can use ugly scrap left overs to fill in the parts that will be cut off. Or you can make larger pieces that when you trim them off you combine with other pieces to make the next stocking.
I recently did some tests with my fancy machine stitches, they didn't work out for the project I was testing them for, but I do have an idea to use narrow beige/cream narrow strips and strings and then machine stitch.